November 23, 2014

Help Send a WW1 Soldier's Cap Badge Back to Family

Michael L. wrote to me about a cap badge he found many years ago. Here is Mike's story:

I am looking for descendants of a John Orr who served in WW1 and lived
in Oshawa in 1926. I have a hat badge that I recently traced to him and
would give it to a descendant of his. I found it in my
mothers’ garden around 1943.It is from the Canadian Highlanders Regiment. A few years ago I was curious and looked up who had lived in the house
before my parents moved in. John Orr was living there in 1926. Last year I found a
site with Attestation papers. I found John Orrs’ papers and he was in the Canadian
Highlanders. If you could find a relative that would be great to give
it to them.

I did some research and found the family in the 1881, 1891 and 1901 census for Wishaw,
Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire Scotland. His father was Andrew, his mother Helen and John had many older siblings.

John Orr Attestation Paper front

I was able to put together a family grouping of:

Father: Andrew Orr born ca 1849 Liberton Lanarkshire

Mother: Helen born ca 1851 Stonehouse Lanarkshire

Children:

Marion b ca 1875

Adam b ca 1877

James b ca 1879

Elizabeth b ca 1881

Janet b ca 1884

Mary b ca 1886

Andrew Jr. b ca 1889

John b. ca 1891

I have not done any more research to find John Orr after his enlistment in the CEF in 1914 but he might appear in the 1921 Canadian census and on a ships passenger list arriving in Canada between 1901 and 1914.

If any of my readers want to help find descendants so the cap badge could be returned to family, please leave responses as a comment on this blog. If you have information on living descendants it will not be published online but I will pass it on to Mike L. What a terrific thing if we can send this cap badge to family!

5 comments:

I would love to help with this little task, particularly as my parents were in the Argyle and Sutherland Highlands regiment in Hamilton, and I have a vague recollection of an Orr among their friends there...but I have tried a couple of times now to get images out of ancestry -- and while I'm able to perform searches, when I request an image, or further details, I get shunted to their 'pay for membership' flash page. In the past I have been able to access images of the census without a paid membership. Do you have any idea what's up with that? Was their a limited time that the 1921 census was to be available to the public on ancestry? I think it's a crime if that's the case. Thanks for any light you can shed. I've posted a query at ancestry, but really don't expect to hear back there.

Hi Lorine,No, that doesn't answer my query. Perhaps you don't realise what I was getting at. Ancestry is now requiring paid membership to access the images for the 1921 Canadian census. In the past it has been free. Even attempting to browse the images by Province | District | Subdistrict -- which according to the agreements referenced on the LAC site should be free -- triggers the pay wall flash page for buying ancestry membership. Am I the only person out there who has had this problem? I'll go and post on a few other forums, see what I can find out.

New!

Death Finds a Way: A Janie Riley Mystery by Lorine McGinnis SchulzeJanie Riley is an avid genealogist with a habit of stumbling on to dead bodies. She and her husband head to Salt Lake City Utah to research Janie's elusive 4th great-grandmother. But her search into the past leads her to a dark secret. Can she solve the mysteries of the past and the present before disaster strikes?

I'm an incurable collector of
antiques, an avid genealogist and a messy but creative cook! I blog, i write history and genealogy books. My main genealogy website is Olive Tree Genealogy http://olivetreegenealogy.com/

Lorine is the author of many published genealogical and historical
articles and books available at
http://LorineSchulze.com